‘The Featherweight’: Venice Review

Dir. Robert Kolodny. US. 2023. 99mins.

A 20th century American sporting hero speaks directly to camera in Robert Kolodny’s The Featherweight – or rather, he doesn’t quite, as this meticulously staged drama about a former boxing champ is a faux documentary that could almost have you convinced it is genuine, and of 60s vintage. The subject is the real-life Guglielmo Papaleo, a.k.a. Willie Pep (1922-2006), a long-time featherweight champion till 1950, seen here desperately clutching to the remnants of his prestige. Hugely vivid and superbly acted – notably by James Madio as Pep and singer-actor Ruby Wolf as his beleaguered wife – it is an extraordinary achievement for all concerned, including writer Steve Loff and the Kolodny brothers, director Robert and DoP Adam.

A faux documentary that could almost have you convinced it is genuine

Enjoying a curious status as detailed period pastiche, while exploring territory that’s hardly unfamiliar, the film may leave some viewers wondering exactly what the point is, however insightful and painstaking it all may be. Even so, The Featherweight has definite niche prospects, and should certainly boost the profiles of all involved.

An opening caption notes that the film is the work of a crew given ’unprecedented access’ to the private life of Pep, whose glory days are over but who is still quixotically chasing a comeback. The film kicks off in 1964 in Pep’s hometown of Hartford, Connecticut, where the wiry, wisecracking fighter is seen joshing with Italian-American friends, then later in NYC, where he is still living the high life, sharp-suited at a public appearance. A snappy, pugnacious talker, Willie trades on his fading legend, quick tongue and cherished mementos like a cornily-inscribed watch given to him by Bob Hope. As with many former greats, he has not managed success well: “I made $1.2 million, and I spent $1.3 million of it,” he boasts, ruefully. But in his time, he was one of the best, as sports writer Bill Lee enthuses. (Lee is played by Michael Siberry, as a vaguely patrician small-town George Plimpton type).

Other key figures in Pep’s life include his long-term trainer Bill Gore (Stephen Lang, the film’s best-known face), always on hand to remind Willie gently but plainly of the tough truth about his present-day prospects; as is Willie’s supportive but no-nonsense sister Fran (Shari Albert). Then there is his manager Bob Kaplan (Ron Livingston), forever enduring Willie’s mirthless “You’re fired” gag, and who has always stuck with him, while protecting his cut of an ever-diminishing income.

But central to the story is Pep’s much younger wife Linda (a sometimes painfully affecting performance by singer Wolf), who has put her acting ambitions more or less on ice. Well aware of her trophy status, she is essentially a prisoner in the Papaleo household, eternally at odds with Willie’s disapproving mother (Imma Aiello), whose contempt emerges in subtitled Sicilian Italian.

While we are used to fake documentary in comedy, The Featherweight is a serious, only incidentally self-referential undertaking that aims to evoke a time, a milieu and the psyche of a man who is like a sporting cross between Arthur Miller’s Willie Loman and the irrepressible working-class characters once played by Ernest Borgnine. Looking perfect for the part, both facially and in the nervy way he carries his snappily-dressed frame, Madio is terrific – simpatico, poignant in his vulnerability. But he is also an increasingly troubling character, as we learn how much Willie has inherited emotionally from his own father – in his dealings both with Linda and, in a more agonised way, with his smack-addicted son Billy (Keir Gilchrist, absolutely nailing a disillusioned 60s hipster weariness).

The film within the film is supposedly shot by a brother duo, the Zupans, with Robert Kolodny heard off-screen playing director Herman. With Kolodny’s brother Adam shooting, on digital, 16mm and Super 8, this film cannily recreates the dynamic of Direct Cinema linchpins the Maysles brothers, thanked in end credits alongside D.A. Pennebaker and John Cassavetes, whose styles are similarly channeled (along with echoes of Jim McBride’s pioneering 1967 mock-doc David Holzman’s Diary). The meta touches are very sparingly but sharply deployed, as in a devastating moment when Linda realises that the friendly film-makers are about to betray her confidence, showing the crueller edge of verité.

Stylistically the film is bang on, both in its period recreation and in evoking the textures of mid-60s cinema: shots of Madio are elegantly spliced with period boxing footage, through crafty editing by Robert Greene (the Kate Plays Christine director). There is, however, an elephant in the ring – Raging Bull, which wrote the bible on toxic pugilist masculinity. The Italian-American domesticity and backchat are inevitably Scorsese-influenced, as is the fight action and even the acting styles (although Madio’s twitchy Pep is more Pesci than De Niro). It’s a debt that’s inescapable, and one that The Featherweight acknowledges in the late boxing scenes and a particular flash bulb motif.

Then again, 43 years have passed since that film, so The Featherweight could be said to be opening a fresh slate on classic material. At the very least, the film is beautifully acted all round, and a dazzling feat of stylistic play and period recreation, barring the odd hairstyle and the occasional phrase that are not quite mid-60s: Linda’s lifestyle and wardrobe might suggest that she’s gearing up to embrace Flower Power but it’s doubtful that, in 1964, she wouldd have talked about “bad energy”.